to hit a momentum that, upon his pulling the handle back early enough, allowed the elevator to coast to a position exactly flush with the requested floor-so dead even you could lay a carpenter's level over the crack. This Lionel accomplished without change in expression or apparent contemplation, without, it seemed, even breath itself. Then he would pull the cage back himself and after being thanked by Charlie show no reaction. At most he scratched the skin flaking from his forehead. You could drop diamonds on the floor, a young woman could pull up her dress, you could cleaver off your nose and shake the bloody lump in Lionel's face. Nothing. He'd been made dead by service, and paradoxically, his deadness passed into Charlie. Every time Lionel opened that cage, Charlie felt just a little less of something. He himself would love to throttle up the elevator, fondle the mechanical tremor of it, even get the braking wrong a bit and have to feather the elevator up and down to hit the mark perfectly, but he'd never had the chance and never would.
The apartment was dark. No Ellie. Odd that she was still out. Where could she be at this hour? Funny old chick, his wife. Julia was right. Anxious these days, more anxious than in the past. Didn't really know her anymore. Sex okay, not like it used to be. Familiar as an old shoe. A brief nudge of genitals. Habit and half-forgotten remembrance. Sometimes his dick worked well, sometimes not. He was tired, or his back hurt too much. Hadn't kept up with the physical therapy, and after sitting in chairs all day, the thing just seized up on him. Plus, no Viagra because of the blood-pressure pills. Rotten all around. Ellie stayed patient. Loved her but didn't know her. Not so bad, that, because she didn't really know him. Didn't know about the eight million! Eight million dollars was a big secret-bigger than a mistress, but smaller than disease. He needed a secret, everyone did.
He drifted through the apartment, not bothering to turn on the lights, letting the glow of the city fill the rooms. Look at this, said Ellie's note on the dining-room table. The New Jersey retirement community brochure. It had the glossy lushness of pornography, happy senior couples standing proudly in front of their 'custom mansions,' expensively tacky matching boxes of vinyl siding and overlarge windows. Lounging around the Olympic-sized swimming pool. Tearing ass in a golf cart across the glistening sixteenth green. we will pamper you. we will care for you. come home to vista del mar. The place pampered you, all right, straight into your grave: 'We look forward to providing you with every amenity, from maintenance-free condo living to the four-star Vista del Mar dining facility to the immaculate greens on our championship golf course to a staff of committed elder-care health professionals on call twenty-four hours a day.' Guys keeling over every week, no doubt, flopping spasmodically around in their golf togs. He'd seen one heart attack recently enough, thank you. Cancer, too, trolling the quiet streets, stopping expectantly in front of each house like the Good Humor truck. He paged back and forth, intrigued. You had to spend real money to get in-a quarter million for the membership fee, plus annual clubhouse fees, pool fees, common charges. A big project, house prices well over a million dollars. They'd thought of everything. Tour-group packages to Moscow, tennis lessons, dog-runs, on-call electrician, plumber, gardening and lawn maintenance, computer classes, glass-blowing, ballroom dancing. Had they hidden a small morgue on the premises? A whole page was given over to 'security features'-the winking promise that cars full of young, joy-riding blacks from Newark or Jersey City would never, ever be seen there. And if they were? Not quite shot on sight, but the protectors of Vista del Mar, claimed the text, were 'experienced enforcement professionals'-code for retired cops who were pals with the local police force and thus could beat the hell out of any intruder with impunity. A safe place. So safe you could go there to die.
He heard Ellie's key in the lock, the sound of packages landing on the kitchen counter. He looked back at the brochure. Something was not right. The women seemed too fit in their one-piece bathing suits; he saw no spiderwebs of varicose veins, no grape bunches of cellulite hanging from their thighs or underarms; and the men themselves were remarkably jaunty, trim around the middle, with suspiciously full heads of gray hair-impossible, Turkishly thick hair-with no skin sagging around their knees, none of the ravages, the proofs of time! No shrunken jawbones, no droopy earlobes, no bandy-legged, shrinking-spine postures, no low testicles flopping sadly inside a pant leg-nothing! These were models, men and women in their smug forties, dolled up in geezery cardigans and knee-length shorts, their hair sprayed gray. Well, screw them. No, screw me, Charlie corrected himself, for not realizing it from the first.
'I hate this, Ellie,' he called. 'I hate everything about it.' He picked up the retirement brochure and walked into the dining room.
Ellie carried in a silver tray of cheese and crackers. 'I know you don't like it, but I'm trying to get us thinking.'
Here was his wife, an attractive woman of fifty-seven, still with nice hips on her, still with lovely breasts, her eyes clear and ankles slim, and she was bunkering in for doom. 'I don't want to think,' he finally said. 'Not about that.'
She put the tray down, careful not to bang it. 'We need to plan.'
'What do we need to plan for?'
She smoothed her blue sweater with her hands. 'The time when we move out of the city.' She disappeared back into the kitchen and returned with a glass of milk and his pills-the blood pressure, the cholesterol, the fall allergies, the replacement testosterone, the vitamins.
He swallowed the pills dutifully, then waved the brochure. 'Did you notice they have a morgue on the premises?'
'I didn't see that.'
'Right there. They embalm the body and stick it in a lawn chair overlooking the golf course.'
'Don't be ridiculous.'
He sat down. 'There's also a wishing well full of dentures and hearing aids.'
'Now you're being mean.' She went into the kitchen.
'Why don't we just move to Hong Kong instead? I'll watch the ships all day. Eat my pills with chopsticks.'
Ellie came back carrying silverware. 'You'd rather move to Hong Kong?'
'Better there than Vista del Muerte.'
'Vista del Mar.' She laid his knife and fork on the table, the fork upside down.
'It's nowhere near the ocean!' cried Charlie.
'They just took an old truck farm-'
'I know what they did.' Charlie fixed his fork. 'They chop up some great old place and put an idiotic name on it, like Vista del Muerte.'
'That's not right,' Ellie said.
'What do you mean?'
'It would be 'Vista de la Muerte,'' she explained. 'You're confusing the masculine and the feminine.'
'Isn't that the trend?' Charlie asked. 'Doesn't that make me a cool guy?'
Ellie ignored this. 'It's got everything we're ever going to need,' she said.
'For God's sake, Ellie, you've got all you need here. A doorman, a gynecologist, a dry cleaner's, and a lot of weepy friends with fascinating tragedies you can talk about.'
Ellie rubbed her finger on the dining-room table. 'Oh, Charlie, the city isn't the same,' she said softly. 'Everything is falling apart.'
'The city's been falling apart for the last two hundred years.'
She looked at him. 'I know, but I was never almost old here. We're almost old, Charlie.'
'Who's almost old?'
'Nobody, Charlie,' she snapped. ' Nobody is getting old. Barbara Holmes says her husband just leapt into multiple sclerosis last month. Woke up with it! And Sally Auchincloss upstairs is in a wheelchair-she's just so heroic about it-and I just heard that Bill's prostate cancer is all through him.'
'Yeah,' Charlie breathed. 'Good old Bill shoots a needle in his dick to get an erection. That is heroism, if you ask me.'
'Please!' she cried. 'Can't we discuss this pleasantly?'
'No.'
She looked at the dining-room table, remembered something, and went back to the kitchen. He flipped through the mail. 'The Chinese work until they drop in their tracks, you know that?'
'I honestly don't understand you,' she called.
'Yes, you do. We just disagree.'
'What do the Chinese have to do with it?' she asked with true irritation. 'You're obsessed with the
